Mailling List Management

1. Role of List Owners

Each list must have at least one privileged owner, who has full administrative access to the list. Normal owners have more limited administrative access. They are able to add/remove subscribers and view the list configuration, but not make changes to the list settings.

These are the roles of list owners.

Overall responsibility for the list- be the contact for questions about the list from IT Services

Deal with any spam or misuse issues.

Manage the list configuration- determine who can post to the list, who can subscribe, whether messages are moderated etc.

Manage subscribers- this can also be delegated to a normal owner.

Manage moderators

Manage adding and removing list owners.

Deal with any error messages such as mail delivery failures and bounce level too high messages.

2. Acceptable subject matter

Mailing lists covering any subject matter relating to the academic, administrative or social/cultural life of the University will be accepted.

If you want a list which does not meet the above criteria, there are several commercial sites which offer mailing lists, for example Google Groups.

3. Requesting the creation of a mailing list

If the ownership and subject matter conditions are met (see above), request a list by visiting the appropriate Sympa instance:

then log in (button in top right-hand corner), switch to the 'Create List' tab and complete the request form.

You will receive a message (usually within one working day), either telling you that your request has been approved and the list has been created, or that your request has been denied.

When your list is created a mail alias will be created which will redirect all mail sent to the list owner to you. For example, if your list was called mylist then any mail sent to mylist-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk would be passed on to the email accounts of the privileged list owners.

4. Requesting that a mailing list be renamed

A priviliged list owner may request that their list be renamed at any time. Only the name (and thus email address) of list will change, while all the subscribers and the configuration remain. To request a renaming complete this self-service form for deleting/renaming lists.

Obviously, the list owner should warn the subscribers that the list name is being changed!

5. Requesting the deletion of a list

Obviously, the list owner should warn any remaining subscribers that the list is about to be deleted!

6. When a list owner leaves

When their University Card is about to expire, a privileged owner will be requested to find a replacement.

The owner can change ownership of a list by adding a new owner and then removing themselves as an owner. Instructions are available in the Sympa FAQ.

One week after the previous owner has left, if there is no replacement owner we will contact any moderators or normal owners , as well as contacting the IT Support staff of the last privileged owner. If unsuccessful, after a period of 5 weeks without an owner, the list will be deleted, with a message informing the subscribers.